Brutal Roman Naval Battle Rocks New York

Even before the second verse of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs,” the tomatoes were flying.

More than a thousand toga-clad civilians gathered around a reflecting pool in a New York City park last week to witness the chaos of a Roman-style gladiator battle on water.

A naumachia, as it was called in Caesar’s time, traditionally pits prisoners and slaves against each other in a nautical bloodsport. This time the spectators took the honors, splashing in knee-deep water and decimating the floating artwork that the event’s coordinator, Duke Riley, and his team spent five months creating.

Duke Riley, an artist based in Brooklyn, has a small obsession with watercraft history. He made headlines in 2007 while trying to sail a wooden submarine he built from Revolutionary War plans towards the Queen Mary 2 cruise ship for a photo op. He was promptly arrested.

Then Riley was captivated by the idea of a naumachia when his professor at the Rhode Island School of Design last year pointed out similarities between Riley’s drawings and the work Caravaggio did on the sets of the historic naval battles. The seed was planted in Riley’s mind of a modern naumachia with handmade boats and plenty of pandemonium.

Watch the video below, and then read on to find out how a handful of artists brought a forgotten Roman brutality to present-day New York.

While working in a residency with the Queens Museum, Riley managed to take over the adjacent, abandoned 1964 World’s Fair Ice Rink.

He originally intended to use it to store supplies he acquired for the naumachia. Eventually it became his studio and proved to be a treasure trove of necessary materials: paint, wood, Styrofoam, etc.

An auxiliary team of artists even built a boat from the PVC side walls of the rink. Six out of the seven boats meant for the battle were constructed out of all recycled materials.

The event is called Those About to Die Salute You — named after the traditional final words shouted to the presiding emperor by the naumachia combatants.

Riley’s plan was to have five boats, representing the five boroughs of New York City, do battle on a body of water in Queens. He invited a few friends to build their own smaller, mercenary vessels and built a surprise one of his own — an explosive replica of the Queen Mary 2.

The Pig (above) was the vision of artist Jade Townsend. It represents Manhattan and its greed and gluttony. He produced the ship for the event as a collaborative effort with Riley. Townsend intended The Pig to also be used in his solo show this September at Priska Juschka Gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. If it made it through the battle.

Riley and his assistant Kitty Joe Saint-Marie conducted extensive research to create authentic looking reed boats and catamarans. Riley says he would often find himself obsessing over a knot or some other detail, until he remembered that these boats were ultimately going to be destroyed.

Kitty Joe Sainte-Marie took a nail through the foot while moving the Staten Island Ferry replica through the ice rink. Sainte-Marie assisted Riley through the entire five-month process.

The Pig was built in sections, so that it could be moved from the ice rink to the event site in nearby Flushing Meadows Corona Park. The pool was only a foot-and-a-half deep, and the crew had no guarantee that it would float above the surface. Townsend did some shaky math beforehand, which fortunately proved accurate.

Townsend climbs up through The Pig‘s innards. Riley and Townsend concocted their collaboration while both showing work in the Havana Biennale in Cuba last April. They’ve worked tirelessly on Those About to Die ever since.

The Pig sits in sections near the pool. Its stern reads “Sick, Sick Wind” — the name of Townsend’s upcoming show. If the boat were to be destroyed, it would ruin the future exhibit.

To protect the vessel, Townsend made sure to arm The Pig with firework cannons and a gas-powered water hose to dissuade potential attackers. Townsend says they accidentally loaded one of the fire fountains backwards, but caught it just in time.

“That would have been bad,” he adds with a laugh ,”especially with all the gas under there.”

On the day of the battle the tomatoes still hadn’t ripened. They were to be used as projectiles for both warriors and spectators. Interns from the museum spent the afternoon bruising, slicing and microwaving dozens of boxes of tomatoes.

Townsend tosses a tomato well before the battle. As serious as the crew was about making this event happen, they still took time to test the tomatoes beforehand by pelting each other.

Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens was the site of the World’s Fair in 1939 — the largest World’s Fair ever — and again in 1964.

A giant “Unisphere” (bottom photo on page 9) was built in the middle of the central fountain in 1964, along with other structures, statues and reflecting pools. (It’s near the New York Mets’ old Shea Stadium and new Citi Park.)

One of the 1964 pools became the site of this naumachia. Plumbers from the city parks department filled the pool for the first time since the 1964 World’s Fair. It provided a perfect venue for the mock Colosseum on water.

Riley estimates that in the two months preceding the battle, he spent six days a week and 18 hours a day preparing everything. And it was all about to be destroyed.

The Queens boat enters the battle arena first to the strains of “Another One Bites the Dust” and clouds of smoke from smoke bombs. The crowd goes wild.

The Bronx catamaran follows, as an announcer introduces the entry. Both the Bronx and Queens boats were built from reeds harvested from a lake near the park. After the reeds dried, the crew bound them into seaworthy vessels.